New Hampshire voters headed to the polls Tuesday to decide a series of consequential races that will shape the state’s political future, from the governor’s office to the US Senate and House of Representatives. All 400 seats in the state House and 24 seats in the state Senate are also up for grabs, along with all five seats on the Executive Council, putting control of the state Legislature at stake. The results will determine which party holds power in Concord and who will shape state policy and the next two-year budget.
New Hampshire’s US Senate race
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-Manchester) ran against Republican John E. Sununu for US Senate.
Republicans see Sununu as their chance to end a long losing streak in Senate races in New Hampshire, and groups backing him poured in millions, including a $10 million ad buy from a new super PAC tied to President Donald Trump’s political operation. Pappas led in recent polls heading into Election Day, including 50% to 43% in an October poll from the Saint Anselm College Survey Center.
Pappas, a Manchester Democrat, has represented the 1st Congressional District since 2019 and served on the Executive Council before that. He campaigned on lowering costs, called housing his top priority, and hit Sununu over his push to privatize Social Security and his 18 years working for oil, drug, and insurance interests.
Sununu held the seat from 2003 to 2009 before losing it to Shaheen, and he is the son and brother of former New Hampshire governors. Trump endorsed Sununu in February, and Democrats argued the endorsement would haunt him in a state Trump has lost in three straight presidential elections.
Sununu cast himself as independent of Trump and tied Pappas to former President Joe Biden. A late ad claimed he opposed the Iran war and Trump’s tariffs on Canada, but he praised the war and defended Trump’s tariffs earlier in the campaign. He also backed a Medicaid work requirement that puts 31,000 New Hampshire seniors and disabled residents at risk of losing coverage.
Granite Post reporting examined Sununu’s stock in drug, tech, oil, and insurance companies whose lobbyists funded his campaign, his large stakes in companies riding the data center boom, the $28 million in public money that helped build his family’s ski town, and his seat on the board of an offshore company that stopped reporting its finances to the federal government.
Sununu denied ties to Jeffrey Epstein despite his name appearing in the Epstein files, and his campaign later admitted his on-camera denial of ever visiting Doha, Qatar, was false. Granite Post also reported on his appearances alongside men accused of sexual misconduct against children.
New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District
Democrat Stefany Shaheen faced Republican Anthony DiLorenzo in the race for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District.
If elected, Shaheen will replace Pappas, who gave up the seat to run for Senate. The district covers the eastern half of the state, including Manchester. It flipped between the parties five times from 2006 to 2016, but Democrats have held it since 2017, and Kamala Harris won it by 2 points in 2024.
National Republicans made the district a top target. Shaheen led DiLorenzo 46% to 42% in the Saint Anselm College Survey Center’s October poll, after the University of New Hampshire Survey Center found the two statistically tied in September.
Shaheen, the daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, is a former Portsmouth city councilor and co-founder of a nutrition counseling company. With backing from Sen. Maggie Hassan in a rare primary endorsement, she narrowly beat Maura Sullivan, 37% to 35%, in a bitterly fought Democratic primary. She made health care and the wealth gap central to her campaign.
DiLorenzo, a Portsmouth businessman who founded the Key Auto Group chain of car dealerships and repair shops, made his first run for office with Trump’s endorsement, then tried to put distance between himself and Trump in the general election.
Thirteen days before DiLorenzo won the Republican primary, his car company pleaded guilty to four counts under Pennsylvania’s car dealer law and paid more than $4,200 in fines and court costs. Democrats accused him of hiding millions from voters, and he campaigned against China while touting an endorser who lobbies for a Chinese company.
New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District
Democratic Rep. Maggie Goodlander is seeking a second term, against Republican Lily Tang Williams in the race for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District. Goodlander has been touted as among the brightest stars among Democrats in her congressional freshman class.
The race is a rematch of 2024, when Goodlander beat Williams to win her first term. Goodlander led Williams 54% to 38% in the Saint Anselm College Survey Center’s October poll.
The district covers the western half of the state. Goodlander, who grew up in Nashua, is a former Naval Reserve intelligence officer who advised the late Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman and worked at the US Justice Department under Biden. In Congress, she has pushed to require congressional approval for Iran war funding.
Williams, of Weare, is making her third run for the seat.
New Hampshire governor’s race
Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte is seeking a second two-year term over Democrat Cinde Warmington. Ayotte led Warmington 50% to 42% in the Saint Anselm College Survey Center’s October poll, which also found 51% of voters approve of the job she’s doing. A September poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center showed a closer race, 47% to 43%.
New Hampshire and Vermont are the only two states where governors serve two-year terms. A New Hampshire governor has lost a bid for a second term only twice in the past century, in 1926 and 2004.
Ayotte, a former US senator and state attorney general, beat Democrat Joyce Craig by nearly 10 points in 2024. She has built her campaign around Warmington’s past work lobbying for the opioid industry. But Ayotte herself took more than $83,000 from opioid-linked interests from 2010 to 2016, including members of the Sackler family behind Purdue Pharma, and Sununu’s Senate campaign accepted $5,000 from the former CEO of a company that shipped 150 million opioid pills into New Hampshire.
Warmington, a health care attorney, served on the Executive Council from 2021 to 2025 and lost the 2024 Democratic primary for governor. She has hammered Ayotte over the rising cost of housing, electricity, and health care, the Medicaid premiums and budget cuts Ayotte signed into law, and what Warmington calls Ayotte’s unwillingness to stand up to Trump. Warmington would suspend the state gas tax.
Both candidates say they want to pause new data centers. Ayotte’s moratorium would come in her next state budget and wouldn’t take effect until at least July 2027, while Warmington has called for a temporary statewide moratorium until the state puts protections in place and slammed Ayotte’s record on the issue. Ayotte won’t say whether she still owns data center stock worth close to $1 million, and the developer behind a scrapped Nottingham data center gave to her 2010 US Senate campaign.
Granite Post reporting has also covered Ayotte’s attempt to fire the state’s child advocate, who later uncovered a massive abuse scandal, files showing her administration worked with ICE on a detention site in Merrimack, and a report that she took $13,500 from donors named in the Epstein files.
More: What to know about the candidates for governor in New Hampshire
Which party will control the New Hampshire Legislature?
Every seat in the 400-member state House and the 24-member state Senate is on the ballot, along with all five seats on the Executive Council. Republicans hold 16 of the 24 state Senate seats and roughly 217 House seats to Democrats’ 177, and four of the five Executive Council seats. Democrats need five more state Senate seats for a majority.
Because of the way Republicans drew the district maps, Democrats would need roughly 53% to 54% of the statewide vote to take either chamber, according to an estimate from the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Democrats last won control of the House and Senate in 2018.
The next Legislature will write New Hampshire’s next two-year state budget, including the data center moratorium Ayotte has promised to put in it. Granite Post reported that a lobbying group gave money to state Senate Republicans after they gutted a data center bill, and that New Hampshire Republicans used AI to turn a Black veteran’s family photo into a stereotype in an attack on state Senate candidate Leonard Bell.
Senate Republicans are also fighting among themselves. In April, Senate President Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) stripped Sen. Tim McGough, R-Merrimack, of his committee assignments amid allegations that he harassed Senate staff. McGough called it a “witch hunt” in a statement at the time.
Late in the campaign, McGough turned on fellow Republican Sen. Victoria Sullivan of Manchester, who is defending her District 18 seat against Bell. On Facebook, he shared an ad from the New Hampshire Senate Democrats accusing Sullivan of taking nearly $30,000 from corporate political action committees, industry groups, and lobbyists.
